6 ms·

As a European, this article on cracked.com (yes, cracked.com) gave me a lot of insight into why / how Trump won. http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-r

As a European, this article on cracked.com (yes, cracked.com) gave me a lot of insight into why / how Trump won. http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on... It's Brexit all over again. Will the politicians in my country (NL) learn to listen to 'the other half', before their campaigns start (next spring)? Probably not.

helthanatos 10y ago
Trump won because people are sick of SJWs. He won because people are sick of being called racists when they're not. He won because his opponent was objectively worse. Any other democrat running against him would have probably led to different results, but the bickering between the children turned out in Trump's favor. It's ridiculous that either one ran. All we can do now is hope Trump does well. It really wouldn't be that hard to do "well"; we haven't had a good president for quite many years.
- mariodiana 10y ago
  It's overall a very good opinion piece, but this little ditty didn't escape my notice: > We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. "Medical problems"? I don't know much about these things, but isn't this what some would call a "microagression"? Eh, I'm going to give the guy a pass. At least he's trying.
  - douche 10y ago
    I think the thrust is, "we don't understand the real problem, lets call it something that we think we know about." All in all, I think it's a pretty solid article, and hits on a lot of the rural-urban disjunctions that I've experienced, as a redneck Mainer from up near the Canadian border having to move out of 1950s-throwback-world.
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  According to the article, there is more to it than just hating sucial justice warriors. The fact that rural infrastructure is crumbling, jobs are lost and not returning and the fact that during 8 years with a democrat at the helm didn't change much for them. It is enough for a lot of people to seriously consider the alternative, especially if the (untrusted) establishment hates this alternative.
  - Veen 10y ago
    > The fact that rural infrastructure is crumbling That's what I don't get. Do Trump voters think he gives a flying fuck about the state of rural infrastructure or the lives of poor people? I don't see it. Sure, the incumbent elite are feckless, tribal, irresponsible, greedy, and dishonest, but Trump is worse, obviously so. I guess that's the problem in a two-party system. Usually you choose the better of two bad options. In this case, all the options were so bad that people just said "fuck it".
    - christophilus 10y ago
      I know democrats who voted for Trump. One of the reasons is that he is planning on investing $500,000,000,000 in infrastructure, including rural infrastructure. So yes, I think economics played a large role in his win.
      - Veen 10y ago
        But I'd ask myself where is that half-a-trillion dollars going to come from, on top of the increases in military spending, the thousands-of-miles-long Mexico wall, the massively expensive roundups and deportations, and so on. Especially when taxes are apparently also going to be reduced. And asking myself that question, I'd think his promises somewhat empty and opportunistic.
      - tzs 10y ago
        Obama pushed hard for big spending on infrastructure from the start of his first term. Not only do we need it in general, but then it also would have greatly helped push the recovery from the recession along. Republicans in Congress were able to block it until they took control of both Houses, and then it was effectively dead. Do they really think Trump has a better chance of getting Congress to pass a large infrastructure bill? I haven't looked into it in great detail, but from what I have seen it doesn't look like the incoming Republican House and Senate are at all inclined to be looser with the pursestrings now. Also, Clinton's plan also called for large infrastructure spending, although only about half of what Trump's plan calls for. That makes it hard for me to understand why a Democrat who voted for Trump would cite infrastructure spending as a reason.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  And here I thought Trump won because of record low voter turnouts. Everyone has a theory.
  - ascagnel_ 10y ago
    The current popular vote total stands at 127MM votes cast, and the Attorney General of California has already announced that they have at least 3MM absentee and provisional ballots to check, so it's expected that turnout will exceed 2012's 129MM votes cast.
    - Spare_account 10y ago
      Forgive me for going off-topic here but I'm curious about your reason for using MM to designate 'million'?
      - teh_klev 10y ago
        I think in the financial industry, particularly in the US, MM is often used to signify millions. MM is also one million in Roman numerals (1000(M) x 1000(M)). See also: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-use-of-k-for-thousands-and-mm-for-millions https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-us... I don't think there's any hard and fast rules globally how one specifies "millions": https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-the-abbreviation-for-million-M-or-MM?shared=1 https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-the-abbreviation-for-mi...
        ddlatham 10y ago
        Wouldn't it be 2000 in Roman numerals?
        teh_klev 10y ago
        I thought that too, but there's an implied multiplier. I'm guessing it's one of those examples of borrow and abuse things.
- acqq 10y ago
  > his opponent was objectively worse If he really continues with global warming denial and make real effects based on that idea, I'd like to see who will dare to say that to his kids. Just this single issue is enough to make the whole difference. https://thinkprogress.org/trump-victory-climate-a0c595572299 https://thinkprogress.org/trump-victory-climate-a0c595572299 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_Hotter_Planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_H... That's also the biggest issue that's still not clear in the confused heads of too much US citizens, and where the real action is needed. Misinformation paid by the oil companies sadly worked. The good proof than even the side that sees other manipulations isn't immune at all. As one thinker said: "when you look at somebody and hold your head and think how come the other side just doesn't see the facts, there's a simple answer: you're an idiot, and, by the way, the other side is too. People aren't rational. The proof: almost 50-50 opinions, even among the supposedly "smart" people, on some important subject -- how probable is that to be the reflection of the real rational state of the truthfulness of the issue in question. Effectively zero."
- pjc50 10y ago
  > objectively worse On what objective metric(s)? Answering this properly is extremely hard.
  - pg314 10y ago
    There is one objective metric on which she definitely was worse: telling lies. And by worse I mean, he told many more of them.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  That's part of it, but I wouldn't put it at more than 20-30% of the total explanation.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
Ummm that article doesn't seem to notice the whole shit ton of blue in the rural northeast. Like the entirety of Vermont and the Berkshires in Massachusetts. The most populous part of Connecticut appear to be the red parts of Connecticut (looks like Bridgeport?). It's hard to tell but the red parts of New Hampshire seem to be around Portsmouth? Which isn't exactly a city in the traditional sense of the word but certainly nowhere near rural. As an aside Portsmouth drivers are seriously the most polite drivers I've ever encountered. The red part of new York is Buffalo which is the second most populous city in new York state! EDIT: now that I look closer it appears Rochester and Buffalo seem to be tiny little blue dots surrounded by red. Does this person think the entire Northeast is a giant city?
- douche 10y ago
  I don't think you can discount the populations of elderly Democratic voters in these New England rural areas. People that have been voting Democrat since Kennedy or longer. Maine tilted pretty hard, with the rural 2nd District going convincingly for Trump. However, LePage also gets a lot of support and approval from those same regions, even now, with everything he's said and done, so we may just like blowhards.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    I'm not discounting anything just saying the map the author used as proof of his or her hypothesis doesn't follow for the Northeast of the US from first glance. The thing that really stuck out for me was New Hampshire and Vermont. Though it's hard to tell for sure with a tiny unlabeled map. Anyone got a bigger one?
    - douche 10y ago
      With Vermont, it's sort of notoriously infested with hippies. I'm kind of joking there, but there's a kernel of truth to it. Out of the three rural New England states, Vermont is always the farthest left, and in places there, Bernie Sanders would be considered too much of a centrist. I'm not sure New Hampshire really falls into anyplace reasonable on the 1D Republican-Democrat axis, except for a standard deviation one way or the other from the middle, shifting with the winds. If you add in the authoritarian/libertarian axis to make it 2D, NH is pretty far up the liberty scale. No income tax, no sales tax, extremely minimal firearms regulation, hell, you don't even have to wear a seatbelt if you don't want to. The southern parts of the state are starting to turn into commuter satellites of Boston, to some extent, but it hasn't really eroded that "Live free or die" character.
shaftoe 10y ago
That article struck a chord with me. I live in a city, but I am not of a city. The no-car, 600-square-foot-apartment, minimalist, trendy-restaurant, latest-social-justice-fashion people that surround me feel like a gang of condescending children. They wave policies with reaching consequences like foam fingers at a sports game. They are mugged and then bend themselves into a pretzel to avoid describing the attacker as black and explain the crime as a symptom of economic injustice. They pretend like Hillary doesn't have 20 years of corrupt history and an attitude that approximates the worst of European nobility. I don't like Trump, but sometimes a giant orange middle finger is needed to break out of a rut.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Does this actually happen? It sounds like a total caricature of what someone thinks city folk are like. I mean, I spent the majority of my life in cities of different sizes and also have friends across the entire Northeast and I travel a lot. Nothing like this actually happens. My extended family are casual racists and complain a lot about Puerto Ricans. Hillary was widely unpopular with everyone I know, liberal, conservative, and moderate. I don't know a single minimalist but know a lot of people who complain they are poor while buying a bunch of junk. When my house was broken into by unknown assailants a friend of mine said "It must be niggers." Nobody really goes around talking about political policies very much, it's almost never a topic of conversation. We are generally just a bunch of normal people and none of us actually do that stuff. We have different culture and mostly different activities than rural Americans but we are not at all like you describe. We do go to restaurants, coffee shops and bars a lot but never because it's trendy. Actually now that I think of it that wasn't big in one of the cities I lived in. >They are mugged and then bend themselves into a pretzel to avoid describing the attacker as black This is absurd and nobody is bending anything. People i know who got mugged said "I got mugged." I do admit i never heard "I got mugged by a black man" but probably because that information isn't entirely relevant but no bending like a pretzel. Unless you believe bending like a pretzel means "not bitching endlessly about an entire race because of the actions of on person."
  - shaftoe 10y ago
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
In a way, rural America was a tech bubble. In the 19th century and earlier, factories were in the city or near water. As the interstate system made shipping cheaper, factories moved out of the cities and coastlines for cheaper land and labor. Now container shipping has moved factories into cheaper countries altogether. But we have generations of people that have lived in these rural factory towns which now have no factory. The issue is real and Donald Trump was the only one addressing it. It's just too bad Donald Trump was the only one addressing it.
- strange_quark 10y ago
  But Trump didn't actually address it. He acknowledged the problem but didn't provide any tangible solution other than "I'm going to bring your jobs back" which is never going to happen. As you said, rural manufacturing was a buble.
  - CoolGuySteve 10y ago
    He said he would renegotiate NAFTA, pull out of the TPP, and do something nebulous involving labeling China as a "currency manipulator". Earlier in his campaign he said he was going to introduce tariffs as well, but I guess that statement didn't count since it's no longer in his "Contract with the American Voter". These are all strategies to add economic friction to importing foreign goods. Then he has his immigration push to block importing cheap labour from abroad. The end result is that American manufacturing and farming done by American citizens will see some improvement but at the expense of the economy as a whole. I'm not sure if he or his advisers really think of the manufacturing decline as a logical advance of shipping technology. When framed that way, they seem like luddites tearing down the cotton mills. But the platform is definitely not as illogical as everyone makes it seem.
    - tzs 10y ago
      > These are all strategies to add economic friction to importing foreign goods. They also add economic friction to exporting US made goods, unless these renegotiations somehow manage to result in deals that are very one sided in favor of the US. The US exports about $310 billion worth of goods annually to Canada, and about $240 billion to Mexico. A lot of US jobs are involved in making those goods. For some reason I don't understand, exports almost always seem to get overlooked when politicians go on about trade.
enobrev 10y ago
I appreciated that article, though I hated the headline and the format. I shared it a couple times and had to make apologies for both in order to ensure people would actually read it. The cracked format better serves pop-culture rants. I found this article similarly enlightening, and a far better read. https://www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the-forgotten-class https://www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the-forgotten-...

helthanatos 10y ago

Trump won because people are sick of SJWs. He won because people are sick of being called racists when they're not. He won because his opponent was objectively worse. Any other democrat running against him would have probably led to different results, but the bickering between the children turned out in Trump's favor. It's ridiculous that either one ran. All we can do now is hope Trump does well. It really wouldn't be that hard to do "well"; we haven't had a good president for quite many years.

mariodiana 10y ago
It's overall a very good opinion piece, but this little ditty didn't escape my notice: > We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. "Medical problems"? I don't know much about these things, but isn't this what some would call a "microagression"? Eh, I'm going to give the guy a pass. At least he's trying.
- douche 10y ago
  I think the thrust is, "we don't understand the real problem, lets call it something that we think we know about." All in all, I think it's a pretty solid article, and hits on a lot of the rural-urban disjunctions that I've experienced, as a redneck Mainer from up near the Canadian border having to move out of 1950s-throwback-world.
spiderfarmer 10y ago
According to the article, there is more to it than just hating sucial justice warriors. The fact that rural infrastructure is crumbling, jobs are lost and not returning and the fact that during 8 years with a democrat at the helm didn't change much for them. It is enough for a lot of people to seriously consider the alternative, especially if the (untrusted) establishment hates this alternative.
- Veen 10y ago
  > The fact that rural infrastructure is crumbling That's what I don't get. Do Trump voters think he gives a flying fuck about the state of rural infrastructure or the lives of poor people? I don't see it. Sure, the incumbent elite are feckless, tribal, irresponsible, greedy, and dishonest, but Trump is worse, obviously so. I guess that's the problem in a two-party system. Usually you choose the better of two bad options. In this case, all the options were so bad that people just said "fuck it".
  - christophilus 10y ago
    I know democrats who voted for Trump. One of the reasons is that he is planning on investing $500,000,000,000 in infrastructure, including rural infrastructure. So yes, I think economics played a large role in his win.
    - Veen 10y ago
      But I'd ask myself where is that half-a-trillion dollars going to come from, on top of the increases in military spending, the thousands-of-miles-long Mexico wall, the massively expensive roundups and deportations, and so on. Especially when taxes are apparently also going to be reduced. And asking myself that question, I'd think his promises somewhat empty and opportunistic.
    - tzs 10y ago
      Obama pushed hard for big spending on infrastructure from the start of his first term. Not only do we need it in general, but then it also would have greatly helped push the recovery from the recession along. Republicans in Congress were able to block it until they took control of both Houses, and then it was effectively dead. Do they really think Trump has a better chance of getting Congress to pass a large infrastructure bill? I haven't looked into it in great detail, but from what I have seen it doesn't look like the incoming Republican House and Senate are at all inclined to be looser with the pursestrings now. Also, Clinton's plan also called for large infrastructure spending, although only about half of what Trump's plan calls for. That makes it hard for me to understand why a Democrat who voted for Trump would cite infrastructure spending as a reason.
M_Grey 10y ago
And here I thought Trump won because of record low voter turnouts. Everyone has a theory.
- ascagnel_ 10y ago
  The current popular vote total stands at 127MM votes cast, and the Attorney General of California has already announced that they have at least 3MM absentee and provisional ballots to check, so it's expected that turnout will exceed 2012's 129MM votes cast.
  - Spare_account 10y ago
    Forgive me for going off-topic here but I'm curious about your reason for using MM to designate 'million'?
    - teh_klev 10y ago
      I think in the financial industry, particularly in the US, MM is often used to signify millions. MM is also one million in Roman numerals (1000(M) x 1000(M)). See also: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-use-of-k-for-thousands-and-mm-for-millions https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-us... I don't think there's any hard and fast rules globally how one specifies "millions": https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-the-abbreviation-for-million-M-or-MM?shared=1 https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-the-abbreviation-for-mi...
      - ddlatham 10y ago
        Wouldn't it be 2000 in Roman numerals?
        teh_klev 10y ago
        I thought that too, but there's an implied multiplier. I'm guessing it's one of those examples of borrow and abuse things.
acqq 10y ago
> his opponent was objectively worse If he really continues with global warming denial and make real effects based on that idea, I'd like to see who will dare to say that to his kids. Just this single issue is enough to make the whole difference. https://thinkprogress.org/trump-victory-climate-a0c595572299 https://thinkprogress.org/trump-victory-climate-a0c595572299 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_Hotter_Planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_H... That's also the biggest issue that's still not clear in the confused heads of too much US citizens, and where the real action is needed. Misinformation paid by the oil companies sadly worked. The good proof than even the side that sees other manipulations isn't immune at all. As one thinker said: "when you look at somebody and hold your head and think how come the other side just doesn't see the facts, there's a simple answer: you're an idiot, and, by the way, the other side is too. People aren't rational. The proof: almost 50-50 opinions, even among the supposedly "smart" people, on some important subject -- how probable is that to be the reflection of the real rational state of the truthfulness of the issue in question. Effectively zero."
pjc50 10y ago
> objectively worse On what objective metric(s)? Answering this properly is extremely hard.
- pg314 10y ago
  There is one objective metric on which she definitely was worse: telling lies. And by worse I mean, he told many more of them.
GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
That's part of it, but I wouldn't put it at more than 20-30% of the total explanation.

nommm-nommm 10y ago

Ummm that article doesn't seem to notice the whole shit ton of blue in the rural northeast. Like the entirety of Vermont and the Berkshires in Massachusetts. The most populous part of Connecticut appear to be the red parts of Connecticut (looks like Bridgeport?). It's hard to tell but the red parts of New Hampshire seem to be around Portsmouth? Which isn't exactly a city in the traditional sense of the word but certainly nowhere near rural. As an aside Portsmouth drivers are seriously the most polite drivers I've ever encountered. The red part of new York is Buffalo which is the second most populous city in new York state! EDIT: now that I look closer it appears Rochester and Buffalo seem to be tiny little blue dots surrounded by red. Does this person think the entire Northeast is a giant city?

douche 10y ago
I don't think you can discount the populations of elderly Democratic voters in these New England rural areas. People that have been voting Democrat since Kennedy or longer. Maine tilted pretty hard, with the rural 2nd District going convincingly for Trump. However, LePage also gets a lot of support and approval from those same regions, even now, with everything he's said and done, so we may just like blowhards.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  I'm not discounting anything just saying the map the author used as proof of his or her hypothesis doesn't follow for the Northeast of the US from first glance. The thing that really stuck out for me was New Hampshire and Vermont. Though it's hard to tell for sure with a tiny unlabeled map. Anyone got a bigger one?
  - douche 10y ago
    With Vermont, it's sort of notoriously infested with hippies. I'm kind of joking there, but there's a kernel of truth to it. Out of the three rural New England states, Vermont is always the farthest left, and in places there, Bernie Sanders would be considered too much of a centrist. I'm not sure New Hampshire really falls into anyplace reasonable on the 1D Republican-Democrat axis, except for a standard deviation one way or the other from the middle, shifting with the winds. If you add in the authoritarian/libertarian axis to make it 2D, NH is pretty far up the liberty scale. No income tax, no sales tax, extremely minimal firearms regulation, hell, you don't even have to wear a seatbelt if you don't want to. The southern parts of the state are starting to turn into commuter satellites of Boston, to some extent, but it hasn't really eroded that "Live free or die" character.

shaftoe 10y ago

That article struck a chord with me. I live in a city, but I am not of a city. The no-car, 600-square-foot-apartment, minimalist, trendy-restaurant, latest-social-justice-fashion people that surround me feel like a gang of condescending children. They wave policies with reaching consequences like foam fingers at a sports game. They are mugged and then bend themselves into a pretzel to avoid describing the attacker as black and explain the crime as a symptom of economic injustice. They pretend like Hillary doesn't have 20 years of corrupt history and an attitude that approximates the worst of European nobility. I don't like Trump, but sometimes a giant orange middle finger is needed to break out of a rut.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
Does this actually happen? It sounds like a total caricature of what someone thinks city folk are like. I mean, I spent the majority of my life in cities of different sizes and also have friends across the entire Northeast and I travel a lot. Nothing like this actually happens. My extended family are casual racists and complain a lot about Puerto Ricans. Hillary was widely unpopular with everyone I know, liberal, conservative, and moderate. I don't know a single minimalist but know a lot of people who complain they are poor while buying a bunch of junk. When my house was broken into by unknown assailants a friend of mine said "It must be niggers." Nobody really goes around talking about political policies very much, it's almost never a topic of conversation. We are generally just a bunch of normal people and none of us actually do that stuff. We have different culture and mostly different activities than rural Americans but we are not at all like you describe. We do go to restaurants, coffee shops and bars a lot but never because it's trendy. Actually now that I think of it that wasn't big in one of the cities I lived in. >They are mugged and then bend themselves into a pretzel to avoid describing the attacker as black This is absurd and nobody is bending anything. People i know who got mugged said "I got mugged." I do admit i never heard "I got mugged by a black man" but probably because that information isn't entirely relevant but no bending like a pretzel. Unless you believe bending like a pretzel means "not bitching endlessly about an entire race because of the actions of on person."
- shaftoe 10y ago

CoolGuySteve 10y ago

In a way, rural America was a tech bubble. In the 19th century and earlier, factories were in the city or near water. As the interstate system made shipping cheaper, factories moved out of the cities and coastlines for cheaper land and labor. Now container shipping has moved factories into cheaper countries altogether. But we have generations of people that have lived in these rural factory towns which now have no factory. The issue is real and Donald Trump was the only one addressing it. It's just too bad Donald Trump was the only one addressing it.

strange_quark 10y ago
But Trump didn't actually address it. He acknowledged the problem but didn't provide any tangible solution other than "I'm going to bring your jobs back" which is never going to happen. As you said, rural manufacturing was a buble.
- CoolGuySteve 10y ago
  He said he would renegotiate NAFTA, pull out of the TPP, and do something nebulous involving labeling China as a "currency manipulator". Earlier in his campaign he said he was going to introduce tariffs as well, but I guess that statement didn't count since it's no longer in his "Contract with the American Voter". These are all strategies to add economic friction to importing foreign goods. Then he has his immigration push to block importing cheap labour from abroad. The end result is that American manufacturing and farming done by American citizens will see some improvement but at the expense of the economy as a whole. I'm not sure if he or his advisers really think of the manufacturing decline as a logical advance of shipping technology. When framed that way, they seem like luddites tearing down the cotton mills. But the platform is definitely not as illogical as everyone makes it seem.
  - tzs 10y ago
    > These are all strategies to add economic friction to importing foreign goods. They also add economic friction to exporting US made goods, unless these renegotiations somehow manage to result in deals that are very one sided in favor of the US. The US exports about $310 billion worth of goods annually to Canada, and about $240 billion to Mexico. A lot of US jobs are involved in making those goods. For some reason I don't understand, exports almost always seem to get overlooked when politicians go on about trade.

enobrev 10y ago

I appreciated that article, though I hated the headline and the format. I shared it a couple times and had to make apologies for both in order to ensure people would actually read it. The cracked format better serves pop-culture rants. I found this article similarly enlightening, and a far better read. https://www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the-forgotten-class https://www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the-forgotten-...